In the vastness of empty space surrounding Earth, the Moon is our closest celestial neighbor. Its face, periodically filled with light and devoured by darkness, has an ever-changing, but dependable presence in our skies. In this article, we’ll learn about the Moon and its path around our planet, but to experience that journey first-hand, we have to enter the cosmos itself.
Tag: space
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How the Moon became a place – Aeon
To geographers and anthropologists, ‘place’ is a useful concept. A place is a collision between human culture and physical space. People transform their physical environment, and it transforms them. People tell stories about physical spaces that make people feel a certain way about that space. And people build, adding to a space and transforming it even further.
Some scholars have started using these concepts to think about extraterrestrial locations. In her book Placing Outer Space (2016), the Yale anthropologist Lisa Messeri observes that scientists often think about planets, both in our solar system and beyond, as places. Sometimes this is explicit, as in the case of a series of talks given by Carl Sagan titled ‘Planets Are Places’. In other cases, scientists express a sense of place indirectly through their practices and language. Messeri observes that planetary scientists conduct place-making primarily through ‘narrating, mapping, visualising, and inhabiting’ other worlds. ‘Importantly,’ Messeri writes, ‘one can be (or can imagine being) in a place. Place suggests an intimacy that can scale down the cosmos to the level of human experience.’
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Um, the odds of that asteroid hitting us in 2032 have doubled – Vice
The odds didn’t increase significantly, but enough to be worrisome. When we first discovered 2024 YR4, it had an estimated 1 in 83 chance of directly hitting the earth. By the time I got around to reporting about it, the chances had increased to 1 in 67. The latest update upped the odds even more. As of this writing, there is a 1 in 43 chance the asteroid will hit us. That equates to a 2.3 percent chance of hitting Earth on December 22, 2032, which means it hits Earth in 23 out of 1,000 simulations.
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Naturally the appearance of a structure which appears to be ‘man-made’ would send the internet into overdrive, with believers quick to use the image as proof of a long-lost alien civilisation. … But before you roll out the red carpet for aliens, it might be worth noting that straight lines aren’t impossible in nature. In fact, various replies to the original thread pointed out that natural wonders such as the Giant’s Causeway in Northern Ireland, the Eye of the Sahara and Turkey’s ‘Fairy Chimneys’ could appear man-made to an alien visitor.
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KA-BOOM – The European Space Agency
Marsquakes – the earthquakes of Mars – and meteor impacts are common on our neighbouring planet. In the last two decades, scientists have scrutinised many images and manually identified hundreds of new impact craters across the martian surface. Researchers have recently turned to artificial intelligence to save them from some tedious detective work and to make connections between data collected by five different instruments orbiting Mars. Europe’s CaSSIS camera is one of them.
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Astronomers discover 196-foot asteroid with 1-in-83 chance of hitting Earth in 2032 – Space
The near-Earth object (NEO) discovered in 2024, which is around half as wide as a football field is long, will make a very close approach to Earth on Dec. 22, 2032. It’s estimated to come within around 66,000 miles (106,200 kilometers) of Earth on that day, according to NASA’s Center of NEO Studies (CNEOS). However, when orbital uncertainties are considered, that close approach could turn out to be a direct hit on our planet.” […]
Size and composition are big players in possible damage, along with impact location,” Rankin said. “It’s hard to constrain size and composition with the current orbital situation, as it’s outbound. Typically, the best way to constrain size is with radar observations and those are not possible right now.” He says that astronomers will have a shot at estimating these characteristics in 2028 when 2024 YR4 will make a less risky close approach to Earth, passing within around 5 million miles (8 million kilometers) of our planet.
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Keypad used to land Apollo on the moon shrunk down to work as wristwatch – collectSPACE
When NASA’s Apollo spacecraft launched to the moon, it had on board two briefcase-size computers that for their day would normally have required enough floor space to fill a couple of rooms. The compact devices were small, but had enough processing power and memory to guide the astronauts from the Earth to the moon. Fifty-five years later, the British start-up Apollo Instruments has been able to shrink the Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC) even further — to the size of a wristwatch. Now, anyone can wear the display and keyboard system, or DSKY (pronounced “disk-key”), that astronauts used on the command and lunar modules. The DSKY Moonwatch is more than just a novelty timepiece; wearers can interact with it just like the Apollo crews did and fly to the moon (rocket and spacecraft not included). -
DSKY: A unique Moonwatch with a true Lunar legacy – Apollo Instruments
Introducing the highly coveted Apollo Instruments DSKY Moonwatch, a four-year endeavour that captures the essence of adventure and the spirit of space exploration. With its authentic design and immersive functionality, this watch is a must-have for any avid collector or space enthusiast. -
‘The most expensive photos ever taken’: the space shots that changed humanity’s view of itself – The Guardian
It was one of history’s monumental moments – but if John Glenn hadn’t popped into the supermarket to pick up a Contax camera and a roll of 35mm film on his way to board the Friendship 7, there may have been no visual document of it. The photographs the American astronaut took from the window of his capsule as he orbited Earth on 20 February 1962 gave an unprecedented testimony of the Mercury Project’s first orbital mission. -
Booker Prize is awarded to Samantha Harvey’s ‘Orbital’ – The New York Times
Harvey has said that while writing the novel she continually watched streaming video from the International Space Station showing Earth from space. “To look at the Earth from space was a bit like a child looking into a mirror and realizing for the first time that the person in the mirror is herself,” she said during her acceptance speech.
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